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Toronto’s poor concentrated in aging highrises

They rise up among the postwar bungalows of Toronto's inner suburbs. Towering buildings that house hundreds of thousands of the city's poorest people.

These apartments are often the first home for those who came to this country looking for a better life. Once built to house modest-income and middle-class families, these aging highrises have increasingly fallen into disrepair and become rife with problems — drug dealing, vandalism, bug infestations, overcrowding — and increasing poverty.

That is the bleak reality for too many highrise dwellers in Toronto, according to Vertical Poverty, a landmark report released by the United Way Wednesday.

It is a troubling development in a city where almost half of residents are renters, says the report based on Census data from 1981 to 2006 and a survey of 2,803 highrise tenants conducted in the summer and fall of 2009.

Although the bulk of tenants surveyed live in private-sector towers, responses from about 600 non-profit tenants suggest living conditions are worse in those buildings.

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“I immigrated with my family seeking a better life here in Toronto,” said highrise tenant Anmol Sharma, who came to Canada with his wife and baby daughter from India six months ago. “The lack of cleanliness, the situation of elevators ... It feels like every moment our life is not secure.”

The report, believed to be the first of its kind in Canada, urges governments to restore Toronto's mixed-income neighbourhoods and calls on the public, private and charitable sectors to properly maintain highrise housing and provide community space and programs for tenants.

With demand for rental housing in Toronto predicted to grow by another 20 per cent by 2031, action is urgently needed, the report warns.

“This housing stock is a vital resource for Toronto, especially the city's low- and modest-income families,” it says.

In 1981, about one-quarter of families living in Toronto buildings of five or more storeys were poor. By 2006, it was nearly 40 per cent, the report says.

The situation was even worse in Toronto's inner suburbs — the old municipalities of Scarborough, Etobicoke, North York, East York and York — where about 60 per cent of the city's highrise rental stock is located. Nearly half of highrise dwellers in the former city of Scarborough, for example, were poor in 2006, compared to 31 per cent in 1981.

A drop in affordable housing construction since 1995 along with rising housing costs pushed more low-income families into less expensive apartment towers during this period, says the report, which focused on private-sector apartments built between 1950 and 1979.

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At the same time, family incomes declined while rents increased.

Between 1981 and 2006, Toronto's median household income dropped to $52,833 from $56,413 in real dollars. But for renter households, incomes plunged by nearly twice as much to $33,397 from $39,793. In the inner suburbs, incomes fell even further.

Meantime, average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in a private-sector highrise jumped by more than $300 to $1,078.

As a result of this “squeeze” on incomes and rents, close to half of the tenants surveyed say they worry about paying the rent each month. Another third say their families do without necessities, including food.

Highrises also became more densely populated during this time with the percentage of units housing more than one person per room doubling.

Most tenants in the survey noted the loss of common rooms or recreational space.

“While there are strong bonds of friendship and mutual support among many highrise tenants, building a broader community life within the buildings is all but impossible,” the report notes.

Despite the problems, the survey found most tenants liked their neighbourhoods and felt they were good places to raise children.

The report is an update on the United Way's groundbreaking 2004 Poverty by Postal Code report, which highlighted growing poverty in the city's inner suburbs. That report sparked the agency's partnership with the city to improve services in 13 so-called “priority neighbourhoods.”

Mayor Rob Ford has questioned the city's investment in those neighbourhoods. But United Way president Susan McIsaac, who briefed Ford's staff on the report Tuesday, said she was “optimistic in our ability to work with the mayor's office.”

“Strong neighbourhoods play a vital role in the prosperity of our city, and we all have a responsibility to dedicate our resources toward improving conditions in Toronto's highrise towers,” she said.

Critics have said housing has not been a high priority for the McGuinty Liberals, with four ministers holding the portfolio in the past seven years. The Liberals' long-awaited affordable housing strategy, announced last month, was criticized by activists for lack of new funding or any meaningful goals.

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